Haunted Encounters: Exile and Holocaust Literature in German and Austrian Post-war Culture

Birgit Lang

doi:10.3390/rel3020424

Abstract

In an essay titled ‘The Exiled Tongue’ (2002), Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész develops a genealogy of Holocaust and émigré writing, in which the German language plays an important, albeit contradictory, role. While the German language signified intellectual independence and freedom of self-definition (against one’s roots) for Kertész before the Holocaust, he notes (based on his engagement with fellow writer Jean Améry) that writing in German created severe difficulties in the post-war era. Using the examples of Hilde Spiel and Friedrich Torberg, this article explores this notion and asks how the loss of language experienced by Holocaust survivors impacted on these two Austrian-Jewish writers. The article argues that, while the works of Spiel and Torberg are haunted by the Shoah, the two writers do not write in the post-Auschwitz language that Kertész delineates in his essays, but are instead shaped by the exile experience of both writers. At the same time though, Kertész’ concept seems to be haunted by exile, as his reception of Jean Améry’s works, which form the basis of his linguistic genealogies, shows an inability to integrate the experience of exile.

Highlights

In an essay titledThe Exiled Tongue‘ (2002), Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész develops a genealogy of Holocaust and émigré writing, in which the German language plays an important, albeit contradictory, role
Améry‘s works, which form the basis of his linguistic genealogies, shows an inability to integrate the experience of exile
The sense of insecurity created by theGarden of Exile‘ in the Berlin Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, an American architect of Central European Jewish descent, for example, is intended to represent the exile experience of German Jews who fled after the rise of National Socialism [2]

Summary

Introduction

In an essay titledThe Exiled Tongue‘ (2002), Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész develops a genealogy of Holocaust and émigré writing, in which the German language plays an important, albeit contradictory, role. The article will explore the selected works of two survivors, Kertész and Jean Améry, and two returned exiles, Hilde Spiel and Friedrich Torberg, and submits that in the post-war world, exile and Holocaust literature are haunted by one another, and that these narratives seem distinct and entangled at the same time.

Results

Conclusion